Arkansas Blog

I would like to say I'm surprised but....

Just think what the clowns in this administration would do if they weren't christian?

*yawn*

Someday, when the facts are known, we'll be able to see side-by-side comparisons of policies that detail the moral character of human societies.

How do we compare to the Gestapo?
How do we compare to the KGB/NKVD?
How do we compare to Idi Amin?
Pol Pot?
From one extreme to the other, high and low, good and evil.

Where would present-day USA rank?

I hope someone will find the incentive to graph it all out -- point-by-point comparisons. You know, the kind of comparisons people make when they are shopping for cars or houses. We have a lot more invested in our country -- why not compare our moral character to a world perspective?

Our parents and grandparents were always able to claim the "moral high ground". Does our generation still qualify?

And we all know what a reputable, reliable source the NYTimes is??? Please, I second the yawn....

The people living outside the Nazi death camps learned to yawn, as well. Research has shown that humans have a remarkable capacity to hurt one another at the orders of authority. But do we need to surrender to those base instincts? Haven't we grown a little in our ethics since medieval times? I fear that day by day we become closer to Nazi Germany.

Ah, Rovie the Republican well-taught and disseminated CCRRR plaint:

"WHEN IN TROUBLE,
WHEN IN DOUBT,
RUN IN CIRCLES,
SCREAM AND SHOUT . . .
A. THE CLINTON'S DID IT, FIRST; or B. IT'S ONLY THE NEW YORK TIMES, NOT FOX!"

Ah, Rovie the Republican well-taught and disseminated CCRRR plaint:

"WHEN IN TROUBLE,
WHEN IN DOUBT,
RUN IN CIRCLES,
SCREAM AND SHOUT . . .
A. THE CLINTON'S DID IT, FIRST; or B. IT'S ONLY THE NEW YORK TIMES, NOT FOX!"

Please, Noelle, poke some holes in the article for us. Pull at some of those loose threads for our benefit here.

I'm really stunned by the comments of Spunkrat and Noelle. "Yawn?" "Oh THAT newspaper?" Spunk I guess it's ok with you that the U.S. tortures because you ascribe not to the notion that we're a democratic nation, formerly the world's beacon of liberty - I guess it's ok that we torture because you're pretty sure that we're bigger, have more weapons and will always win. I supppose your reasoning is that "might makes right" and it's ok because the torture victims are brown or Muslim or that you just don't see them over there on another continent. That's a way to compare the might of nations, I guess. Do you forget that each soldier (and each Iraqi) is a human? Would you have an American soldier tortured, is that ok with you? Are soldiers yet another class of humans you're superior to? Because when we torture, we can never complain that an enemy will torture an American. We will have no standing to object. When we torture, we invite torture. With your reaction - "yawn" - I guess it's ok then to torture Americans, too.

"Right" is what you do even when no one is looking.

As for you, Noelle, pick up another newspaper today - any of them - and if you can read, the facts are not contested. If you don't read so well LISTEN to the verbal testimony of Comey and other Justice Department objectors to this heinous twisting of the law, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The Bush Administration tortures and corrupted (almost) the entire Department of Justice in order to cover their asses with dubiously written, SECRET laws, memos and opinions.

I can only conclude that neither of you actually believe in the ideals upon which this country was founded. You believe in a bully nation, a world-dominating military power. If that is your attitude I'd hate to be your spouse, your children, your co-worker, your employee or your neighbor. It means that your belief is "crush the weak" and "to the victor belong the spoils."

Did you watch "The War" this week and feel the swell of pride and appreciation for the country we were in World War II, the soldiers who valiantly fought to free the world of JUST THAT KIND of oppression, the kind we are now perpetrating? Franklin D. Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower fought and won two separate wars on different sides of the globe against ruthless leaders set on world domination and they did it WITHOUT TORTURE.

Did you spend your childhood fearing the Russians and their secret police? Now we are like them. Did you reel after seeing the Tiger Cages in Vietnam? Now we are like those torturers. Anything you approve of and condone that we do to an enemy can be done to us by an enemy, just as anything you condone doing to an enemy can be done to YOU, by your government. You approve of it! When you discard the rights of another human being you have also discarded your own.

Are you old enough or acquainted with history enough to know about the Nuremberg trials after World War II when the Nazis were tried for war crimes? That's us, the U.S., in the dock now, in the court of world opinion. We torture as a fully-supported national policy and we have deployed secret police (contractors) to kill Iraqis at will and above the law.

That's not MY country- not the America in MY heart - and it is not done in MY name, I vow. And until we root out the criminals now in office and pursue a restoration of lawfulness we stand in that dock, guilty as a nation, I'm outraged and will never run out of outrage until we, again, correct this behavior.

Thanks mag -- That was well stated. Too many people are like Spunkrat and Noelle, just asleep, perhaps yawning their way through life. It's time to wake them up.

I am reading Ghost Plane which describes in vivid detail the techniques used and the dismal results. It lists over 12 thousand specific flights of rendition (kidnapping) and goes inside the worlds worst prisons and houses of torture where we, USA, now are the worlds largest client in virtually every torture chamber. We torture people for years, yes years on end. Nothing justifies this on our part, nothing. Oh and it doesn't work, no information garnered through torture is credible and in fact most of the time it is misleading at best, usually completely manufactured for the client and answers/confessions designed to give the client what they want to hear.. Everyone reading this blog would sign a confession saying they were a terrorist or worse if they went under an hour of what torture we do to others.

Bush may be doing this indiscriminately to brown people now but he has done this to virtually everyone including American citizens such as Jose Padilla and lord knows who else. Pandoras box has been open for years and it will take concerted effort to get this madness back in. George Bush and his minions (Addington, Yoo, Gonzo and at least a few hundred others) have made the USA the Jeffrey Dalmer of the world and if you doubt this you are not listening, reading, or thinking. Perhaps it is something you just feel like not listening to but that does not mean it is not true.

Nothing is more important than stopping a gang of truly mad men, be they your family, your neighborhood gang, Hitler, or your own President and his closest yes men.

You, yes you! are a torturer right now! You don't even care if there is real evidence involved with the person you are torturing with razor blades across all of their bodies. You don't care what this person says is true while you electrocute them over and over and then drown them repeatedly or place them in chairs designed to very slowly break their spine.

The act of torture is the reward not information or security. All of us Americans torture if only because we are silent and our silence guarantees that someone we know and love if not us will someday be subject to the very same thing..sooner than you think.

If somehow you didn't know this before the NYT article today and this blog.. well now you know you no longer have an excuse. And not one Arkansas elected human being is standing up and shouting for this to end!!! not one! Pryor and Ross have a voting record which only suggest they enjoy this behavior! We must fire them all.. we must demand war crimes be pursued against Bush/Cheney and their yes men for all our sakes!

I weep for my country and I fight every single day for a tiny shred of reasoned sanity! It's getting very hard to find. Just look at a child in your home or neighborhood...look at your friend or loved one near you and understand right now is the time to fight and make sure they are never tortured, NEVER! Because if you don't, it is coming soon to a local jail or little "safe" house in your neighborhood. Most likely dressed in Department of Homeland Security all black uniforms.

ENOUGH! and To The Hague!

Ecce! is voicing a sick feeling I've had in my stomach for the last few years. Where do we come off continuing to pretend we live in the best country on earth? We once were the best people on the planet, but no more. You can take your pick of the nastiest little hell-hole countries on earth and list their top 10 sins and find the US doing the same thing in spades. How do we have the nerve to pretend we're different? Where is your proof? And no, I'm not taking a fake note from Jesus....this is an adult discussion, put your toys away.

The world we lost is the world mag is talking about. The world Ken Burns put on display over the last 2 weeks. My wife and I were amazed that at the end of the war when Japan surrendered, they held more US troops in their prison camps than we have fighting in Iraq today. How can we expect to win any war with so few troops, with such a poor effort?

This tells me the object is War Without End. WWE is fantastic for business, but it's hell on poor kids and it's hell on the US treasury. If there is such a thing as sin, waging war for profits has to be the main one. I can't imagine being the parent of a US soldier in Iraq today.....what misery it must be for them too.

The topic of this thread should have been enough to blow this country apart. What is worse than torture? Who is worse than someone who would torture? How can anyone defend torture? Why do we continue to sit on our hands while our country leads the world in cutting edge torture?

How can Mark Pryor get one vote other than his own next year? TORTURE......the great fear of mankind since the beginning of time. TORTURE....and we do it....and we do it a lot and we do it very well

O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our torture policy was still there.
O say, does that star spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the formerly free, and the home of sanctioned torture ?

>>But officials had privately decided the agency did not have to comply with another provision in the Convention Against Torture - the prohibition on "cruel, inhuman, or degrading" treatment.<<
NY Times

I see no reason why they should think otherwise. The administration practices cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment right here in the homeland on its own citizens. Why would any good RWwacknut think it's not ok to do that to suspected terrorists?
.

*yawn*
It worked. MY point is this, and Noelle missed it as did others: We've heard this type of story a hundred times about the Bush Administration...

And NO ONE. Not ONE DAMN DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSMAN does anything about it. NOTHING.

I hate our President. I hate torture. But instead of railing at the *Yawn* (sorry, the story makes me sleepy), why not batter down the doors of Mark Pryor, who ACTUALLY LIKES TO TORTURE PEOPLE???

This story has been in the press so many times. And so many people have heard it so many times. And so many people are simply lulled into *yawn* (sorry) boredom by it that they now think torture is normal.

AND WE HAVE MARK the torturer PRYOR to thank for it.

I find this little nugget in the NYT torture article to be interesting. I'm wondering if Rice/Zelikow are trying to throw Cheney under the bus. Of course I quickly remember Zelikow is a founding member of the PNAC and realize he can't be trusted to do anything so noble as things might appear on the surface. Just a curious note..

<<<<<<<<<<
"At least a few administration officials argued that no reasonable interpretation of "cruel, inhuman or degrading" would permit the most extreme C.I.A. methods, like waterboarding. Mr. Bradbury was placed in a tough spot, said Mr. Zelikow, the State Department counselor, who was working at the time to rein in interrogation policy.

"If Justice says some practices are in violation of the C.I.D. standard," Mr. Zelikow said, referring to cruel, inhuman or degrading, "then they are now saying that officials broke current law."
<<<<<<<<<<

Spunkrat, I know you're a good guy... "yawn" just set me off.

Any nation that practices torture is not deserving of protection but is in need of liberation!

". . . Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. "
- Dylan Thomas

"Yawn" might be an appropriate comment on UAF Football or Roundball Follies, but not my country blythely accepting torture as official policy. If that's not clear enough, click on the handle.

As for Pryor and his fellow Rpublican Lieberman, they should review the names and jobs of the defendants (they don't deserve the title "men") tried at Nuremberg in 1945 and 46. Enablers are just as guilty of "Crimes Against Humanity."